Giant livestock farms passing buck on pollution

Posted: Thursday, September 13, 2007

By Carl Pope

It's an unpleasant subject-one that polite company often avoids. But this fall Congress will be asking the question: Who should pay to clean up water polluted with livestock manure — those who caused the pollution, or the taxpayers whose drinking water and streams are polluted? The answer should be obvious. If you contaminate water, you should be responsible for cleaning it up. That's the law. But under pressure from the livestock industry, Congress is poised to add a provision to the Farm Bill that creates a special exemption from the polluter-pays law and absolves all livestock operations of responsibility for improper management of manure. Citizens whose drinking water and rivers have been harmed by the factory farm industry need help to fight this amendment.

Historically, farmers have used their animals' manure to fertilize their crops, but crops can only absorb a limited amount of such nutrients. In today's livestock industry, it's common to find tens of thousands of hogs and dairy cows or millions of chickens crowded into industrial-style facilities, which can generate as much manure as small cities. When the amount of manure generated exceeds the crops' ability to absorb it, excess phosphorus, nitrogen and other chemicals including arsenic can pollute the water.

When this happens, someone must clean it up. Currently the polluter-pays law known as Superfund is the only vehicle that cities and states can use to recover cleanup costs from manure-related pollution. Neither the Clean Air Act nor the Clean Water Act authorizes the state or federal government to seek recovery of damages. This means that without the polluter-pays law, local communities are left holding the bag.

In the past few years, Waco, Texas, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, each experienced millions of dollars in higher drinking water treatment costs because large livestock operations had polluted their sources. Because their ratepayers should not have to absorb these extra costs, the cities sued livestock operations under the federal polluter-pays law and eventually won better manure management practices. More recently, Oklahoma Attorney General W.A. Drew Edmondson sued large poultry companies in Arkansas to stop the pollution of the Illinois River Watershed and to recover cleanup costs.

Oklahoma and Texas have forced the livestock industry to take responsibility for its negligent actions in their states, but the industry is now fighting to avoid further accountability. It wants Congress to create a special exemption in the Farm Bill, so that if livestock manure contaminates water, the livestock industry would be off the hook.

The industry argues that the law is threatening the nation's small family farmers with lawsuits for doing what farmers have always done — fertilize their crops with animal manure. But there is no epidemic of lawsuits. In the entire 26-year history of the polluter-pays law, there have been only three lawsuits against animal feeding operations to recover cleanup costs for manure-related contamination. Each involved large-scale animal operations with a history of manure management problems. Farmers who are using their manure in quantities their crops can absorb are protected under the law. The polluter-pays law includes a specific exception for the "normal field application of fertilizer." Only those factory farms who have so much manure that they have to dump it on the land to get rid of it, rather than use it to fertilize crops, have anything to fear. In addition, any animal feeding operation that's complying with its Clean Water Act permit is insulated from the polluter-pays law.

Despite the livestock industry's assertions to the contrary, no farm has ever been designated as a Superfund site due to fertilizer releases.

The National Association of City and County Health Organizations has united with the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National League of Cities, the National Association of Counties and water utilities, including the American Water Works Association and the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies to oppose exempting the livestock industry from the polluter-pays law. This fall, the Senate should not force communities to pay to clean up the livestock industry's mess. Otherwise, local communities could literally be left up manure creek without a paddle.

Carl Pope is executive director of Sierra Inspired by Nature. The Sierra Club works to protect our communities and the planet. The Club is America's oldest, largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization. www.sierraclub.org